Unstoppable | The Vampire Diaries

122. While You Were Sleeping

"A Huntress?" Riley asked as she and Damon made their way back to the house. "A freaking Huntress?!"

"Rayna was lying," Damon tried to assure her, but even to him, his voice sounded unconvinced.

"Do you remember what happened the last time we battled a Huntress?" Riley asked, ignoring him. "We all completely separated. Stefan went on the run for three years, and we had to bring the Armory in to capture her." She tried to take a deep breath but her lungs weren't working properly. "Well, we have no Armory, and there's no way we're killing Bonnie, so what do we do?"

"We assess the situation," Damon said calmly. Riley looked at him like he was insane.

"Assess the...?" She trailed off. "You do know that as a witch, Bonnie wanted to kill you, right? As a Huntress, she will not hesitate to rip your heart out."

Damon shrugged. "Maybe when we go in there, Bonnie will be the same annoying witch we all know and love."

"And if she's not?" Riley countered. "If she's the demon creation of Rayna Cruz and her vampire-hating ancestors? Then what? Because we can't kill her, and we can't just... snap her out of it."

Damon sighed, saying the three words that he never wanted to say. "Then we run."

Riley's mouth fell open in surprise. "So, the first sign of trouble and you and Stefan make your second great escape? Because that worked out so well the first time?"

Damon stopped walking and turned to her. "I wasn't talking about me and Stefan."

Riley's eyebrows knitted together in confusion. "Then who? Because there's no way in hell Care or Enzo would run with you."

Damon rolled his eyes, not sure if she was deliberately avoiding the topic or if this was something that she'd never consider.

And suddenly, she got it.

"Me?" she asked, to which he said nothing. "You're asking me to run with you?"

"I'm saying that I don't think I'll have to run," he clarified. "But if I do... you wouldn't be the worst company in the world." He smirked, but then his face became more serious. "I've already left you once, and I can't make that mistake again."

Riley tried to form words that would make a coherent sentence, but all she could come up with were stuttered sounds that didn't make any sense.

"You don't have to answer," Damon said after a while of watching her struggle. "I'm just... doing what I should have done the first time."

They started walking again, bursting through the door of the Salvatore house to see Enzo, Caroline, Ric and... Bonnie.

"Hey," Bonnie greeted them. When neither of them said anything, she frowned. "What?"

"Uh... are you okay?" Riley asked warily. Bonnie was sitting up, smiling, and everything looked as normal as it always did.

"Yeah. Whatever Rayna did, it worked," she said hesitantly, looking from Riley's shocked face, to Damon, who didn't know whether to be freaked out or ecstatic. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Damon said, a smile on his face. "Rayna used her dying breath to feed us false information."

Enzo's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "What did she say?"

Riley sighed, shaking her head. "Something ridiculous about Bonnie waking up as a Huntress." A smile crept onto her face as she looked at Bonnie. "You feel like killing any vampires?"

Bonnie raised an eyebrow, looking in Damon's direction. "No more than usual."

Ric frowned. "So what did Rayna mean?"